Photojournalism: Compare & Contrast the Stories Being Told
Every day we’re assaulted with hundreds (if not thousands) of images online, on TV and in the street. They tend to become a blur except for the most powerful ones.
On Thursday Great White Snark posted this page about an article where photo editors weighed in on Jonathan Bachman’s iconic #BlackLivesMatter protest photo showing a woman calmly, but defiantly facing down police so heavily armed they looked like robots. It’s an amazing photo, but despite my enjoyment of its professional analysis and its symbolism, I’d largely forgotten about in the wake of images of campaign politics, the attack in Nice, and the attempted coup in Turkey (all in only two short days).
There were also several photos and a screengrab earlier in the week of a Gateway Pundit contributor named Michael Strickland who fearfully pulled a gun on protesters in Portland earlier this month (and was subsequently arrested and charged with two counts of unlawful use of a firearm, menacing and second- degree disorderly conduct). Those photos were far more pitiful than iconic in terms of the subject matter.
Anyway, what caught my attention was this: As I was on the LGF home page scrolling through the week’s main articles I noticed the photos described above in particular because they happened to fall caddy-corner in the tiled layout:
I was suddenly dumbstruck by how these two images, when juxtaposed, spoke volumes about the enormous differences in our experiences as Americans, our worldviews—the things that make up our respective terms of reference and guide our behavior. I decided that it was imperative that I put the photos right next to each other and create a page about them.
So here’s the page. I won’t attempt to tell you what to think about the photos—you can compare & contrast and decide for yourselves.